SXSW Film

Daily reviews and interviews

The Parking Lot Movie

Documentary Feature, Emerging VisionsD: Meghan Eckman

The backwaters of college towns are generally more colorful than elsewhere, and Charlottesville, Va., is no exception. Spend a long summer afternoon inside the exclusive club of the Corner Parking Lot employees as they ponder drinking, set up the flip-cone court, and when you find yourself participating in the head-patting, tummy-rubbing contest, you'll feel like a member, too. The buried lead here, however, is not so much beer foam and games as it is a postage-stamp class war fought in a zone of subjective misunderstanding. Though the derision of nonpaying former classmates stings, so must the unapologetic smirking of the lot attendants, the self-proclaimed "arbiters of who is good or bad based on their car and parking habits." Languishing graduate students, poets, and romantic underachievers make for interesting commentary, and director Eckman's production is stunning, but interminable complaints about "fat rich guys" sour, quickly turning this piece into bile with a smile.

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